Even Though I Don't Miss You

by Chelsea Martin

  EVEN THOUGH

  I DON'T MISS YOU

  CHELSEA MARTIN

  Short Flight / Long Drive Books

  a division of HOBART

  SHORT FLIGHT / LONG DRIVE BOOKS

  a division of HOBART

  PO Box 1658

  Ann Arbor, MI 48106

  www.hobartpulp.com/minibooks

  Copyright © 2013 by Chelsea Martin

  All rights reserved

  Some of these poems have appeared elsewhere, some in slightly different format, including online in Illuminati Girl Gang, Hart House Review, Fanzine, and Housefire, and the zine, Camel Toe

  ISBN: 978-0-9896950-0-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  Inside text set in Georgia

  Front and back cover art by Chelsea Martin,

  front and back cover text and inside asterisks by Ian Amberson

  I became aroused while I was in the shower, and I started fantasizing about how I might seduce you once I was finished with my shower. I imagined jumping onto you from behind and wrapping my limbs around you. But in my fantasy I sort of hurt you by jumping onto you, and you had also been holding a bowl of cereal that I hadn't imagined until after I imagined jumping on you, and I made the cereal spill all over the floor, and you seemed tired and looked at me and sarcastically asked me if I was trying to seduce you and then you made me clean up the cereal. By the time my fantasy was over and I left the bathroom, I was noticeably irritated.

  You said, "You seem in a weird mood."

  I said, "You always say something like that when it's actually you who is in a weird mood and you just don't want to take responsibility for your own weird mood because you don't want to take the time to analyze your own feelings in life."

  And you said, "What's going on?"

  And of course I couldn't say, "I'm really mad and hurt and confused over this hypothetical melodrama I just went through while I was in the bathroom," so I just said, "What the fuck?"

  And you said, "What the fuck?"

  And I said, "It's an interesting question."

  Now whenever someone asks me something about you I say, "I don't know. I don't remember," without even listening to the question.

  I've never meant "I love you" so much as when I tried to say it to you by using words like, "resolve" and "supposedly," or when I tried to say it by using a metaphor about waking up with someone else's Band-Aid on.

  This poem is about death and, to some extent, life. I'm drinking wine because I'm trying not to drink anymore. Drinking wine is the closest thing to not drinking that I can manage right now.

  Is it overbearing of me to text you more than once per year asking if I still have the correct phone number?

  If you don't respond, what is the maximum number of follow-up texts I can send within the month?

  Does this number change if I email instead of text?

  What if in the emails I mention that I have a bad feeling about the state of your health because I haven't heard from you?

  What is the maximum number of times I can contact you per year confirming your contact information? I'm just asking.

  When I texted you about my party, you texted back, "Who is this?" and I didn't respond and you didn't come to my party.

  Of course, it was bound to happen this way. In terms of the sequence of my life and the habits I have as a human, I could have predicted that I would feel this way and you would not know I feel this way and, given that I was once a little girl who felt it was important to pretend to like rice cakes, I was basically designed to internalize my feelings until they became obsessions and the obsessions became part of who I was (like a freckle or tumor) and you were bound to be in my dreams almost every night, everyone should have expected that, and those dreams were going to affect my perception of you, and there should never have been any question that my image of you would warp in my mind and you would become, to me, someone only vaguely resembling the person you used to be, and this fact alone was going to greatly influence my perception of the world. And of course you weren't going to come to my party and of course I was going to pretend to enjoy my party and spend the whole night pretending not to watch the door.

  I'm taking screenshots of the image on Photo Booth, instead of clicking the take photo button. There are pizza rolls in the freezer and I've barely considered heating them up. Guess I just feel really brave.

  I dreamt about an uneventful trip to the post office. I was in the post office but in the dream you had recently left me, or hurt me somehow. Standing in line at the post office was my attempt at appearing casual about the situation, even though I genuinely felt casual.

  I wish I knew it was a dream, though. I would've eaten some pizza rolls or something.

  You said, "You have a curly-Q in your pubic hair."

  I said, "Oh."

  And you said, "Does that offend you?"

  And I said, "No, I'm flattered."

  Yesterday I saw a girl walking down the street, tears streaming down her entirely unexpressive face, mouth open, while emitting no noise and neglecting to wipe the tears from her face and neck, so now I know for sure I'm not the only person who does that.

  I bought you a pair of shoes once. I never told you this, but there was some problem with the shoe selection when I bought them. They didn't have the color I wanted, or I had to go to several stores to find the right size. Something like that. I remember crying.

  But then you thanked me too much for the shoes. It was annoying.

  You woke up from your nap while I was still watching you. You swore that you would want to make out with me if you didn't happen to be so physically ill. At the time, I thought it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me. Looking back, I think you were just trying to get me to give you my Pepto Bismal.

  I've always hated myself because I'm impatient, self-righteous and quick to judge others, but I"m starting to realize that I hold myself to too high a standard, making it impossible to be happy, which is another thing I need to start being down on myself about.

  I said, "I think I'm going to be vegetarian."

  But looking back, yeah, my feelings are kind of hurt, because I couldn't've been more explicit in saying that I wasn"t going to be giving out my Pepto Bismal that night.

  You said, "What was it, again, that derailed your confidence the other day? I can't remember."

  I said, "Conspiracy theory about aliens."

  And you said, "Ohhh, that's right."

  I've been meaning to ask - what is your personal definition of the term 'heat conductivity?'

  You told me not to worry, but I wasn't feeling worried. I thought maybe there was something I could be worried about. I tried not to worry about figuring out what it was that I could but should not be worried about. I tried to comfort myself by thinking about the things I knew I could be worried about, each of which I was certain you weren't referring to when you told me not to be worried, and told myself not to worry about them.

  You pointed to my backpack and asked if it was a backpack.

  I tried to say something to you about my feelings. I was looking for some kind of warmth. A kind of connection to indicate that I was experiencing the same world that someone else was experiencing. I tried to indirectly express this but you said, "Stop talking about heat conductivity, Chelsea. No one cares. I don't even think you care," and you disconnected from chat.

  There is a piece of clothing thrown on the floor in the shape of what I look like to myself.

  Yesterday I cried over a 30-second trailer for a Robin Williams movie I saw fifteen years ago.

  I said that I wanted to have a baby.

  I said, "My body is strong enough, and it will be a g
ood joke to play on my future self."

  Jokes about pregnancy are really funny because you have never thought so.

  I said, "It feels like we're at the point in the relationship where I can start pooping with the door open and start saying I love you so much and denying that anyone else has ever been attractive."

  It's upsetting to feel so close to someone yet not have the ability to control their thoughts or effectively manipulate their feelings. Sex is ultimately disappointing because a body becoming separate from another body is a cruel reminder that two bodies can't be merged in any emotionally sustainable way.

  I'm not saying I felt lonely during sex but if I thought about it afterwards it did seem lonely.

  The most romantic love stories are the ones where nobody ever gets what they want because they are always pretending they don't want it.

  I said, "When did you first know that you liked me?"

  You said, "I don't know. I've always liked you."

  I said, "But when did you know that you wanted to date me?"

  You said, "I don't know."

  I said, "Do you want to know when I first realized liked you?"

  You said, "I'm halfway asleep."

  Being in a relationship for a very long time feels just like being single except that I can't remember the last time I was alone for more than five hours.

  You and I were turning into the same person and growing apart simultaneously, which felt like finally getting the one thing I always wanted, which was learning not to want that particular thing.

  What I look for in a relationship is feeling good all the time, but I'll settle for feeling bad all the time. But maybe I shouldn't use the word 'relationship' unless I'm saying it sarcastically.

  I would never say this to you, because we always got in fights over stuff like this, but I got this really intense feeling of love for you one time while I was watching you sew a button onto your shirt. I was totally overcome by your beauty or vulnerability or something, and I got caught up in the moment and secretly opened your computer and upgraded you to Hulu Plus.

  Today I cried over the same 30-second trailer for the Robin Williams movie that I cried about yesterday because I looked it up again.

  Some of my friends have a hard time reconciling the fact that I read poetry on the toilet with the bathroom door open, but they don't read the kind of poetry I read.

  Honestly, I'd rather hang out by myself all the time and cry about how hot the shower is than hang out with someone who only wants to tell me 85% of what goes on inside their heads. I wish I were the type of person who had 13-15 friends and liked each one of them with about 10% interest, because I would end up being at least 130% interested in my friends. I think I could probably spend about 3 hours finding the solution to that math problem, mostly because I always forget how to use the division button on my calculator, but also because this issue barely qualifies as a math problem. I guess I'm lonely.

  Your friendship is merely an opportunity for me to spread my philosophical views.

  Maybe I write because no one will shut up long enough for me to talk. Maybe I just need a quiet girl friend.

  All I want from life is to creatively express myself.

  And be admired for it.

  And be rich because of it.

  Sometimes when I'm laughing I realize how long it has been since I've laughed with or around you. I swear it gives me such a deep feeling of strangeness that it shocks me and throws me into this strange ultra-consciousness in which I can only move my body like it's a puppet and I feel so far away from myself that I can almost see the curve of the Earth.

  Sex is so weird. There's always that moment like who is going to undress me?

  People like to pretend they don't want things when they want them very badly. It's kind of like how I don't like ugly people but it has nothing to do with their looks. It's their personalities.

  Something about you seems so familiar. This is a weird question but do you have any personal philosophies having to do with pants? Perhaps some strong opinion about giving pants as gifts? And not to ever do it?

  I would like to say something about how the experience of "now" is just a selection of memories being re-appropriated and slightly altered to benefit one's preexisting ideas about what how "now" should be perceived, and that the memories being appropriated for this are just old "nows" that have gone through the same process.

  I feel like everything I write could be mistaken for theory about Adobe Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool.

  I'm listening to fugues on YouTube and trying to find some way to compare our relationship to the fugues. They are so familiar. But I think our relationship is not like a fugue. A fugue is like a trap door in that it is pointless until just the moment when it becomes useful. Sometimes the simplest trap doors are the most profound. Anyways you didn't ask me anything about the fugue.

  I momentarily forgot that you were not just an appendage to me and I said, "Do you want to make an OkCupid account?"

  You said, "What are you talking about?"

  I said something unintelligible while piecing together newly-forming ideas such as the fact that you were a separate body from myself, that we were dating, that what I said was unprofessional, and that 'unprofessional' wasn't the right word to use to describe my behavior, since this wasn't a workplace; 'inappropriate' was better, or 'confusing,' or 'bad.'

  I made a goofy face and looked at my wrist as if I had a watch on, in reference of some kind of sketch comedy situation I think.

  You said, "I'm not sure what's going on."

  One time you accused me of ovulating and I said, "WHY? BECAUSE I'M TALKING ABOUT CHOCOLATE-COVERED HEART-SHAPED MARSHMALLOWS?"

  The space in my life I've designated for you seems to be much too big, and you seem to have a low to medium-level interest in being there.

  You said that my queef sounded like the end of a ketchup bottle and I somehow felt happy about that. It's like I'm trying too hard to feel happy.

  Sometimes I'm so aroused and all I can do is frantically eat birth control pills.

  I meant for that to sound more punk rock.

  I am the strong, female lead in my own currently-in-development novel, and I can do anything I put my mind to, even if it is remaining in a very difficult and frustrating relationship with low emotional payoff.

  Not that that's what's happening.

  You said, "This conversation has no basis in reality but I guess that's because relationships are only interesting in concept," after I had said something like, "I'm not sure if you actually like me or if you're just here," although what I meant to say was, "Please hold me because if you don't I don't know what I'll do," but after I had said it I felt like you would interpret it more like, "I think neither of us could do any better but that's not really a reason to stay," and that you were about to ask, "Do you ever visualize us together in the future and feel disappointed?" and that the simple answer would be, "Yes" but more specifically, "Not even very far into the future."

  Romance is such a funny term.

  Funny as in, "I have a fake body part. Guess what it is."

  The protagonist in my novel is called 'I,' and she doesn't even know that she's in love with the French antagonist until she kisses him and then explains that she, "normally doesn't kiss French boys unless [she] believe[s] that it will increase [her] overall emotional stability and/or preserve the positive aspects of [her] self-image in terms of spontaneity, recklessness, and international significance."

  There is moment that foreshadows the kiss in the beginning of the novel where someone asks the protagonist and the French antagonist if they are dating and the protagonist and the French antagonist both say, "No," at the same time.

  Then the French antagonist says, "That was one of those moments where one person is like," and he shakes his head vigorously, "And the other person is like," and then he nods his head vigorously.

  And the protagonist says, "Were you going," and nods her head vigorously.


  And the French antagonist says, "No."

  It kind of feels like I keep writing the same thing but maybe I just keep being the same person.

  Later in the novel, joint purchases are alluded to, and the French antagonist gets a haircut at the protagonist's request.

  Protagonists in novels can be selfish and awful and manipulative and pathetic and still we read page after page and call them 'true' and try to see ourselves in them.

  I'm jealous that that's the way it works for protagonists in novels.

  I guess I'm still coming to terms with the fact that when I walk out of a room the story line continues in the room I just left instead of following me around like a security camera.

  Sometimes you would look at me in this way that said, "I haven't heard a thing you've said in three years," and then you would make a joke about how shitty my new recipe was.

  Well if you hate my new recipe so much why don't you get a restraining order against it?

  I feel heartbroken today, but I don't know. Sometimes I get that way when I'm fucking hungry.

  Sometimes it seems like the whole day is spent listening to songs about you. I think of what you might be doing in the world at that particular time, and I try to imagine you doing it. I try to think of something to say to you while you do this imaginary activity, and I slur the most important part.